I'm a little tired

Yesterday I took part in a dance intensive - it was about 6 hours of training with Sharon Kihara - an instructor who came up from San Franscisco. Wow, it was amazing. She was amazing- love her personality and humour and teaching style and immensely admire her talent. She made a good point, that for the audience they may view slow, graceful moves that look easy but really there are so many muscles that the dancer is required to engage that it's fascinating just how hard the body is really working. Not only did I learn technique and moves from her, I was also reminded how out of shape I am. I must get back to yoga!

In our first 3 hour session, the first hour was yoga. Intense yoga. Moves that I should've been able to do better, moves that I used to be able to do better but no longer can since I quit yoga about a year ago.  She also mentioned that we should all be doing Pilates as it's extremely beneficial for our style of dancing as well. Looks like I got me some homework! (Well I always had homework but now I've been reminded that I'd better make this a regular part of life!) 

I'm glad that 1 only took the one day workshop as I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to make it through  the 8 hours today, but I made a promise to myself that I will get back to yoga/pilates and the next time one of the famous instructors comes to town, I'm signing up for the whole weekend. So far the next BIG BIG one is in 2014 so I have about a year to prepare - it's almost like training for a marathon.

Eco and I already went for a big walk this morning and I'm just going to take it a little easy today, I definitely have a FULL BODY ache happening - but each move I make, each time my muscles yelp, I'm reminded of what I need to do for my body. Especially now that I'm "middle aged", I feel it's important to keep my body moving well - I don't like the proclamation that says "that the average person spends the last 10 years of their life in pain. " I don't want to go through that - even if that phrase is just some advertiser's mumbo jumbo, I don't want to prove them right if I can help it.

How tired was I? I slept 10 hours straight! I can't even remember the last time I did that!

My Weight Loss Coach

As you may have read, for my birthday my brother gave me the "My Weight Loss Coach" program and JP gave me a lovely red Nintendo DS Lite. I started the program on my birthday.

It's really a great tool. It comes with a pedometer that connects to the DS so it can keep a record of the steps walked and there are eating and exercise goals. It gives me challenges to complete - some 1 minute challenges like an quick exercise and others are 24 hour challenges like eating a piece of fruit, or washing the dishes (get up and move!). There are also games that teach you nutrition facts and what foods have fibre or fat or carbohydrates - the better you score the more challenges you earn.

On Friday I ate more than I exercised. The program was gentle about it. I was glad that it reminded me of my most common mistake - big portions! On Saturday I had a headache in the morning and when to a party in the afternoon - I didn't even log in at all. On Sunday I didn't receive any nasty messages so I thought I got away with it, but then a weekly chart showed me a big red dot on the zero indicating that it knew full well that I was AWOL that day.

I am more aware of what I consume, as everything get logged into the program. If I'm too lazy to log it in then I don't want to eat it. It's only been 5 days so I don't have a progress report for you yet, but I'll let you know as I progress.

I have been walking almost daily with Jazz(my dawg-another weight loss coach), at least 6 days a week and I feel great - very energetic - and even Jazz (who's 12 and I think has an arthritic 'ankle') seemed to be very energetic during this morning's walk. And when I turn on the game, a cute little girl is very happy to 'see' me and expresses "neat - you're here!". What a cute little coach I have.